The ability to send real time fire alarm updates and building information from the building fire alarm system to firefighters en route to the fire is currently available. FIG. 1 illustrates a known implementation. Information from a fire monitoring system 10 indicative of a developing fire condition can be wirelessly transmitted to fire fighting personnel for review via a display unit 12 while en route to the fire.
Mobile phones can be expected to be a frequent means for firefighters to receive the information.
Given the limitations of very small mobile phone screens to display building graphics, text plus digital speech/audio will be the common display modality as illustrated in FIG. 1.
As illustrated in FIG. 1, known presentations of alarm related information are via an alarm list. Such lists while accurate do not provide a spatially meaningful verbal or visual description of how the fire is spreading in the building. A traditional reading of an alarm list corresponds to:                Alarm 1 is at 10:05 PM on Floor 5        Alarm 2 is at 10:07 PM on Floor 5        Alarm 3 is at 10:14 PM on Floor 6        
Hence, all spatial integration is carried out by respective first responders in potentially hectic conditions as they are traveling to the fire.
There is thus a need to be able to provide to first responders spatially meaningful verbal descriptions as to behavior of a fire condition. It would be useful to provide verbal information as to how a fire is spreading along a floor in a region, for example, without relying on the user studying alarm lists and attempting to extrapolate to the spatial behavior of the fire in the involved region.